On September 16, The River worshipped on the banks of the Chattahoochee. Several people had told me they had guests coming, but when we started none of them had come. So when a woman I didn’t know came forward for communion, I assumed she was a guest who had come late. After worship, I approached her to say hello.

It turned out that she was not a guest of anyone.

Instead, what had happened was that this woman had come to the park because she was upset. She was a Christian, and she had come to the park to pray and find peace. When she saw us worshipping, she came over. All of this came out in a rush after I introduced myself. I asked her if we could pray together, and she said she would like that very much. I got a couple of women from church to sit with us, and we talked some more, and we prayed. I got up to speak to some other people, and the others stayed with her. They talked for awhile, sharing God’s love by being her friend and being there for her.

I asked her to write down her name on a prayer request card, and she filled it out. In a week, I and the others who spoke with her are going to follow up and see how she is doing. We’re going to keep reaching out to her. God brought her into our life, and we’re going to find out whether or not it was to bless her once, or to be part of our community, or what. I don’t honestly know what will happen.

What I do know is that this is how evangelism happened in the bible. The fact that she’s a Christian already is irrelevant. In the bible, people Jesus finds what are called “people of peace. People like Zacchaeus and the Samaritan woman at the well . These people come to Jesus desperate, and he helps them, but they also listen to his teachings. They believe what he’s saying, and they follow him.

Jesus also sends his disciples out to find people of peace. Not everyone we meet, serve and love will be a person of peace. Some people may accept our help, but not be interested in being part of our community, or in following Christ as we do. Will this woman be a person of peace? I have no idea, but we will find out in a couple of weeks when we go to visit her again. I’ll let you know how it goes. For right now, though, I’m just happy that we are following Jesus’s method of evangelism. I’m confident that if we do that, the results will come, and they won’t be the results that bible thumpers get. They will be results that bless us, our people of peace, and our world.

Hello!

This book tells the incredible true story of Felix "Bush" Breazeale, a feared hermit who attracted ten thousand strangers to the funeral he held while still alive in 1938. It is the true story that inspired my 2010 film Get Low.

I had begun researching Get Low as an outsider, a New Yorker married into a skeptical East Tennessee family. By the time Get Low arrived in theaters ten years later, I had earned their trust. They opened doors that allowed me to finally learn why Bush had his funeral while he was still alive, and why so many people came. I found the moving story of a man trapped by his culture and past, desperate to rewrite his life's story before it was too late. Uncle Bush's Live Funeral shows that any outcast can find acceptance, and any label can be overcome, available now by clicking on the picture above.